From Ego to Impact: Building Trust in a Digital World

Jeffro (00:03.39)
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. In today’s world of endless social media algorithms, AI-generated content, and automated everything, it’s easy to forget the most powerful marketing still comes down to something timeless, real human connection. If you’re tired of feeling like you have to hack the system just to get noticed, today’s guest is going to be a breath of fresh air. So I’m joined by Frederick Weiss, a seasoned marketing executive who’s helped companies scale through meaningful customer engagement strategic branding and data-driven marketing. He currently leads marketing at Snet Communications where he helps businesses grow by focusing on experience over noise. And he recently authored a book about building confidence, collaborating authentically and standing out in a crowded world. So Frederick, welcome to Digital Dominance.

Frederick Weiss (00:48.846)
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Jeffro. It’s my honor to be here.

Jeffro (00:52.946)
Yeah, and I’m excited because I mean, we’ve got a big question we can start with, right? In a world where algorithm seems to control everything, what does it actually look like for a business to break free and create real human connection?

Frederick Weiss (01:05.588)
I think at the root of it, we are talking about how to share ideas and not your ego. And that seems like the trap a lot of us fall into. We forget that we need to make real human connections. And that’s what the genesis of success is. The reason why people have a hard time selling is because, and it’s real simple, our ego gets in the way. We have all these kinds of confirmation bias that are a result of social media algorithms. And we have, as a result of that, a lack of empathy for other people. So we stay in our bubbles. We don’t really think about who the consumer is and what the emotional connections are for their pain points, their problems. And a lot of times that hinders our ability to sell. you know, I think at a deep level where in an age where social media algorithms and ego pitches, if you will, they dominate. And we forget what truly sells ideas. It’s human connection. And it’s about relationships. We’re suffering from a zombification, if you will, of society via all these social media algorithms that teach us to hate each other. And we become a little too judgy of other people.

You know, if I have I’m holding up a toy Cybertruck, like if I have a Tesla, I’m either on one side of the aisle or the other. And I don’t want to get into politics. But, you know, I think just because what kind of car you drive and obviously there’s real political ramifications there that, you know, one could jump into, which we’re not going to here. But there is real people behind these decisions. And I think, again, we were just a little too judgmental. And when we become so judgmental, it’s easy for us to start talking at people rather than becoming more collaborative and opening the door and making an authentic connection with people. Because at the end of it, if we’re co-authors of our success with other people, that’s where we’re gonna get the most effective…

Frederick Weiss (03:30.624)
selling techniques and the most effective way to get our ideas across. There’s a lot of people that are stuck with this kind TED Talk style script where they, you know, just again, they talk to the audience rather than speak to them and try to understand them. And we need to shift away from that and try to understand our audience and make connections and not be so you’re either this way or that way and remove ourselves from tribes.

Jeffro (03:59.612)
Gotcha. I mean, that makes sense. I think in person, it’s a lot easier to connect because the real person is right in front of you. But when we’re posting things online, you know, what are a few practical ways that, you know, someone who owns a business can start doing that without feeling like they’re, I don’t know, forced or inauthentic, you know what I mean?

Frederick Weiss (04:18.85)
Yeah, I think to go back to it and to get to that, the things they could do, you we need to look at these social algorithms and remember that they keep us engaged to sell us ads, you know, that that dopamine hit and that again, that confirmation bias where we’re we’re almost like human livestock. We’re being fed all this stuff and we don’t care what we’re eating and we don’t have the time. We don’t want to know. We’re just taking that all in. And a lot of the times that stuff we’re not aware of. And I think the solution there is in a world where all these algorithms prioritize engagement over truth, it’s critical to focus on those genuine human connections rather than relying on social media as the source of information. Because it’s not real news. It’s just there to entertain us. And sometimes it’s there as a literal weapon of war. These phones and these screens people hide behind, they’re almost like an equalizer, like a gun. They empower everyone on equal ground by keeping everyone anonymous. But eventually someone’s gonna get hurt. So what we need to do as a result of that is we need to, in a world where all these algorithms prioritize that engagement is again, we need to make those real human connections, we need to connect with our audience and we need to share our ideas. So think about this, for example, you know what a mosaic is, right? It’s a piece of art where everyone puts, where you put a piece of like a glass or a stand or whatever, little pieces of things as a puzzle onto things, right? And at the end, you form a picture out of that.

So if we do that in a large scale with a group of people and provide people more ownership and allow people that we might find annoying or frustrating or whatever, and we allow ourselves to be a little bit more collaborative and allow people more ownership of opportunities of the things that we’re doing, we’re gonna be able to all look back at that mosaic when it’s done and everybody’s gonna have ownership of that. And they’re all gonna say, yeah, I made that.

Frederick Weiss (06:41.742)
I made that picture because again, we’re sharing our ideas and I’ll go into that a little bit deeper, but at a very high level, you want to provide ownership to other people and allow them to explore and be part of your ideas rather than taking all those things in for yourself and not being a source of collaboration. True collaboration is the best way to share your ideas.

Jeffro (07:05.66)
Right.

Okay, well I want to talk about that a little bit more because there is a lot of marketing advice that says just sell your ideas harder, right? But to summarize what you’re saying, it’s stop selling and start sharing because sharing is a way to have that real human connection. So can you talk us through that shift in mindset that has to take place as someone’s creating content so they can go from the ego-based stuff into this, I’m sharing what I’m doing or blah, blah.

Frederick Weiss (07:15.461)
Sure.

Frederick Weiss (07:36.726)
Yeah, absolutely. So it’s all about that ego ownership versus how to collaborate, right? And influence virtually. we often think about selling our ideas means delivering the best pitch or presentation. And that’s how we’re going to get noticed. But within a team or an organization, it’s about presenting. And it’s not just sometimes about presenting well, it’s about we think about earning buy in, right? getting that buy-in is what we’re going to have as our first step of collaboration. And buy-in doesn’t come from people literally buying your ideas outright. It comes from true collaboration. Too often, we guard our ideas to get credit because of ego. And that could backfire because if people don’t go with what we’re presenting, then our ideas, our agendas, they just don’t go anywhere. So if people aren’t involved, if they’re not invested, and that means no traction, no support, and you’re going to do a lot of cold selling, and you don’t want to do that. So it’s hard to gain that support if you have your ego, whatever your past trust issues of people, or if you just find people annoying as well, like I said, and you don’t want to provide people that in, you want to have all those cookies for yourself. So the solution there is to make people co-authors of your ideas, Jeffro. You want to invite people in from the beginning. Don’t just pitch, but invite them in, share that ownership. And when people share your ideas, they’re naturally going to become your biggest advocates because it becomes their ideas too. And that’s what you want. You you need to, you need to let go. You don’t need to take all the credit.

You need to understand that success is all about building something bigger than yourself. And to do this, you need to publicly recognize contributions with people. know, if somebody has an idea, take that in, socialize it, make sure everybody knows that, you know, you and, you know, whomever are speaking and you love their ideas, even if it’s your idea, let them think it’s your idea. Just, you know, socialize those ideas because, know, the,

Frederick Weiss (10:03.138)
You want to be an influencer. You want to be an, and I don’t mean that term, but you want to be an idea machine. And people are going to value you more because you bring value because you have all of those ideas. They’re not so concerned in somebody that’s always, you know, winning or whatever, you know, you could get a cookie, you know, from your mommy at home. What I’m talking about here is making sure that you, share your ideas. And when you share your ideas, you make sure that you want to acknowledge people. You want to build goodwill and you want to be that team player because, you know, if you focus on just you, you’re not going to be able to get that leverage. You know, for example, in my career, early in my career, I came into this company and I remember I was charged with a new company brand, a new GTM strategy to get things going. I think we even had a launch a new website with the team. And so I went to a few different people in the company and I ultimately brought in the CRO into the creative process because they’ve been with the company the longest and they had a lot of good insight and I just wanted their input. A lot of people looked at them as a leader in the company. So I asked for their input, they provided a lot of great ideas and I made sure that I socialized that throughout the company. I socialized it with our CEO in every meeting. I said, hey, so and so she came up with all these great ideas, even some that were mine that, you again, I don’t care, I don’t need the cookie. I just need alignment to get things done. And through that, you know, we had a great product at the end and the CEO praised our project. They praised our team and our collaboration was able to be fruitful as a result. And we had a fantastic go to market campaign that came from that.

I think we launched an amazing website that won some kind of local award at the time. I think they’re the takeaway is that the thing is that ideas grow better without isolation and they grow with people. We have to let go egos. We got to do things by having other people involved. We got to invite people early and have that organic support.

Frederick Weiss (12:25.742)
And in business, the best ideas aren’t just sold, they’re started, supported, and co-created and co-authored.

Jeffro (12:35.234)
Cool. Well, that was a lot, but thank you for the story there and kind of the insight. I think that’s a great picture of how when you are in a bigger organization, especially, and you have these ideas, you can’t just push, push hard. You’ve got to get other people’s buy-in, make sure that it is a group effort so that the actual idea does come to life and is presented in a way that’s going to work for everybody and they can be proud of it. For a second, I want to focus a little more on, let’s say, the smaller business where they might not have a whole dedicated marketing team and now it’s just

Frederick Weiss (12:56.216)
That’s right.

Jeffro (13:03.736)
them trying to, you the owner or co-founder maybe is trying to get online and get more business and they might not even have the ego problem that you’re talking about. They might be on the other end of the spectrum where confidence is something they struggle with. You know, they might be thinking, why would people listen to me on the internet? There’s all these other options out there, but they’re trying to market themselves. So how can someone, you know, actually be not unapologetically awesome, you know, in one term, but without trying to

Frederick Weiss (13:06.894)
Sure,

Jeffro (13:32.056)
bring their ego, but really just show people, hey, this is what we do, we’re really good at it, we wanna help you, know, because can they do that without crossing the line into arrogance and turn off potential customers? Let’s talk about that.

Frederick Weiss (13:42.318)
Absolutely. Yeah. And you have to be prepared for that. know, whether that’s that 22nd opportunity at the beginning of a Zoom call with an investor, you see somebody behind you in the back of your line and the queue for Starbucks for your $9 latte, whatever that is, you need to have something that’s really creative. And you need to make sure that you have something that where when you when you talk to people, that you’re gonna give them a reason to listen. And you need to give them something quickly. We’re in a world full of distractions with, I don’t know about you, my email box is way too full and I’m not gonna be able to get to any of that. Same thing with LinkedIn. I got LinkedIn messages for days from people that I’m not even sure are real these days. You could schedule all that stuff on Lemlist for days and who knows, right? So you need to be…

You need to be dynamic with this stuff. you got to be, I think one of the terms I’ve heard is, you you got to be loud, quick and delicious. And I think that’s used deliberately, right? So you’ve to craft in the, you know, the proverbial elevator pitch that that movie trailer is the way I like to think of it. You need a clear plot, a memorable title and something that people can relate to, right?

For instance, if you want to start an anonymous robot coffee delivery company, you needed to describe your idea with things that people understand and could connect with like that, right? You need to say it’s like Boston Dynamics meets Starbucks. And you could name it something like drip drop coffee or I Robocop something, whatever, probably a good idea. Not one of those things, you need to create some kind of movie trailer with examples that people know and people could get behind. If that makes sense, you you need to make a connection that’s real, has emotion behind it and something that touches on pain points. And you need to have a memorable UPC, unique selling proposition, you know, something like the old &Ms, milk’s in your mouth, not in your hand, right? It’s easy to remember and it makes sense because yeah, you don’t want chocolate over hand. So

Frederick Weiss (16:05.912)
You know, something if you think about the example I just said, like iRobotCup, right? You could say that you’re building a coffee delivery company that brings hot, fresh coffee to you with no lines, no judgmental baristas that spells your name like you’re a villain in a DC movie, right? The pitch would be something like iRobotCup. Think of Boston Dynamics meets Starbucks. The problem is that you’re stopping for your favorite coffee shop every day and there’s a long line, a long drive through and you don’t want to be late for work again, but you need your coffee. What do you do? So you just schedule your coffee delivery when and where you want it delivered and your coffee will be there waiting for you when you get there and the line could be something like, I don’t know, hot, fresh with no line and you’re on time. That is a nice, know, easy to understand you, you know, unique value selling proposition, USP. And it’s easy to remember, it’s clear, it makes sense. And I’m throwing in all these movie trailer ideas again, because it’s easy when you describe something to somebody to get them excited with these things. If you want to sell a movie, you could say it’s Superman meets aliens and it’s blah, blah, blah, blah. Just like I’m using Bothell Dynamics meets Starbucks. Make it easy, make it quick and make it fast.

So when you’re a smaller business, you want to make sure that you connect emotionally. You make sure that you’re reading between the lines of your consumer and you want to deeply understand their pain points and have something, again, that’s quick, fast, and delicious for them to consume, to make sense of, and get their message out there right away without confusion.

Jeffro (17:32.864)
Gotcha.

Jeffro (17:57.429)
Right. So I mean, the way you’re talking about some of these pitches and ideas, it sounds like a commercial, right, which is fine. But if we’re talking about social media and having an owner post on a regular basis daily or weekly or something, you don’t want to be saying the same thing every time either. how do you approach that? Yeah. So but you want to be authentic, right? You don’t have the big budget. I can definitely help you script stuff. So how do you maintain that?

Frederick Weiss (18:03.456)
Yeah, yeah, sure.

Frederick Weiss (18:13.592)
Of course, that’s where AI comes in.

Frederick Weiss (18:19.234)
Of course, yeah.

Jeffro (18:24.907)
consistent messaging over time and keep it interesting without it just feeling like you’re reciting something that AI regurgitated.

Frederick Weiss (18:32.608)
That’s a great question. I’m glad you asked that. So we’re in a very interesting time, right? These tools have gotten so much better. Leaps and bounds and I’m not sure everyone’s aware of the abilities that are out there. Now you could use a tool like, I don’t know, clay or what is it? Relevance AI. I think I’m saying that right. Where you could set up a bot to do a lot of these things. Now I’m not talking about a bot in terms of like you know, just a, you know, a chat GPT. I’m talking about a virtual bot to where you could say, okay, here’s my UBC. Here’s my differentiator. Here’s what I want to say. Here’s my challenge. Here’s my, you know, my point where I’m going to say, Hey, if you’re not satisfied within 30 days, you know, I’ll PayPal you a hundred dollars, right? Something like that. You want to create some kind of formula. Basically you want to set those prompts up within one of these systems to where you’re filling your sales pipeline because it’s one, looking through your ICP, your unique, your ideal client profile, right? So when it’s looking at, you set up your ideal client profile, which I’m sure you’ll have ahead of time, you set up what you wanna say to your ideal client profile.

And then you set up that agent, which acts as a virtual BDR, right? They’re going to do all that business development for you. They’re going to fill in the pipeline. You set up variables. You set up what you want to say. And it’s amazing. A lot of the times these days, that stuff comes out better than what a person could say. So I think if you were, if I would give advice to a small agency that’s, you know, maybe 10 people.

I would invest and again, these tools are not that expensive. They’re not even expensive for like, you know, anything under 50 bucks a month, one seat. That’s probably all you’re going to need because if you are the CEO, CTO, the marketing department all in one, right? You wear a few different hats. You got your baseball hat, your Batman hat and this hat. Do something like that. Set these things up. Spend a week learning these tools.

Frederick Weiss (20:53.986)
They’re not difficult to learn. I promise you that. And you could have your pipeline filling up and having these AI tools knock the stuff out for you faster than any human could or would. And replying and filling your pipeline even better than you could imagine.

Jeffro (21:15.935)
And I’ll add to that, with let’s say, chat GPT, you pay the 20 bucks a month or something. If you’re not a marketer though, you don’t have a background, you don’t necessarily know how to ask for something that’s gonna be good and that’s going to resonate on an emotional level. Now hopefully if you listen to the podcast for a while, you’ve heard us talk about having that ideal client profile and knowing who you’re trying to talk to. So the main thing to remember with AI and prompts and stuff is give it as much detail as possible and give it examples of what you want the outcome to be like. if you tell it, hey, I need a commercial for my plumbing business. Like it’ll give you something generic, but if you tell it a lot more details like, hey, I’ve got a residential plumbing business. We work with this type of home that was built before 1970 in California and we fix these three problems a lot. We tend to work for homeowners who are retired or whatever. And I like this type of commercial. I saw this other company do. Here’s the script. You know, I wrote this down. I want something similar, but I want you to focus on my differentiators and here’s my guarantee that we offer it to our clients.

Okay, can you imagine the different output that you’re gonna get based on the amount of information I gave it? Just think of it as if that’s the person on your team and you’re giving them a task, like you’re gonna get better work if you give them more context and details.

Frederick Weiss (22:22.114)
Exactly.

Frederick Weiss (22:29.198)
Exactly. mean, you could put things like, you know, the social proof, you know, I’ve done business with company X, Y and Z, A, B and C, you know, work that in, work in some additional resource to them out. You know, you could, these days too, you got to think about as well that with these tools, you could take advantage of all those multi touch channels. You don’t want to just send somebody a blast of emails every 10 days from whatever you’re using through your email sequence, whether it’s HubSpot, Zoho, whatever, right? You wanna make sure that you’re sending them emails, but you wanna call them, you wanna connect with them on LinkedIn, you wanna send them a LinkedIn email, you wanna pick up the phone for yourself for real too as well, and look at, this person clicked on this, or they opened up this email three times. Hey, that’s a key indicator, give them a phone call.

So you gotta be diligent, you gotta do your homework, and you gotta put in the effort.

Jeffro (23:31.325)
Yeah, and keep at it, right? You don’t have to expect your first one to be great. This is how you get better, is by doing a bunch of them. So you can pick a social media platform to be like your throwaway. And like, I’m just going to post everything to TikTok. And the ones that kind of get some views, OK, then I’ll post that one to Instagram. And like, Instagram will be my main channel for building up my following or whatever. Like, that’s OK. Like, the more stuff you do, the more you’ll start to realize what sounds good and bad and what’s actually working.

Frederick Weiss (23:59.822)
Yeah, in my book, I always, I talk a lot about that. You got to fish where the fish are. So if you’re, if the fish you’re trying to catch aren’t on TikTok and they’re on Instagram, pick up your poles, pick up your bait, go over there and fish over there and Instagram. You know, it’s, it’s really important to, you know, of course cast a lot of lines at first, see what’s working. But if, know, you’re catching more fish on Instagram and you put more of your money, more of your time, more of your effort there, and that’s working for you, you’re going to see that grow exponentially just makes good business sense.

Jeffro (24:31.749)
Yeah, well, we’re coming up on our time. So Frederick, this has been a really great conversation. Thank you for reminding us all that marketing doesn’t have to mean gaming the system. It’s still about being human first, even if we’re using AI tools to help us create the content that we’re putting out there. So for those of you guys listening, you can connect with Frederick, grab a copy of his book using the links in the show notes. And if you’re listening to the audio only, he does have an awesome bow tie. So you can you’ll see that if you look up his website or something. So I always appreciate a good bow tie. So let’s wrap up with this last question. If you could give one piece of advice to a service business owner who’s trying to stand out and grow in today’s noisy digital world, what’s that one piece of advice?

Frederick Weiss (25:02.914)
thank you Shane. Sure.

Frederick Weiss (25:14.508)
that’s a great question. Thank you so much. What I would say is that if you’re trying to stand out, make sure that you really know what makes you different from your competition. Do the research. Do a lot of that research. Identify at least your top 10 competitors. Who are they? What do they do? And what do you do different? You don’t have to be the you know, the best at X, Y, and Z. Maybe you’re the best at

handholding, maybe you’re the best at you know what we pick up the phone and somebody calls, you know, we’re real people. If that’s your differentiator, lean into that use that and make sure you use that to your advantage and communicate that out. So again, do the research, find out what makes you different and really lean into that. And that’s what’s going to give you your success.

Jeffro (26:03.004)
Awesome, love that. Thanks again, Fredriff, for being here today. Thanks to all of you guys for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean a lot if you leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps us reach more service business owners who are ready to achieve digital dominance. Now take care and we’ll see you next time.

Frederick Weiss (26:17.582)
Thank you, Jeff Rowe